About Me

In a few words

Head Shot

I’m Rami, I’m 26, and I’m the guy with the grin on the right.

I love making software, doing business, and playing piano. I’m this close to getting a degree in English literature!

I’m almost always available on Google Talk and Skype, my ID on both is r.kayyali, so you’re most welcome for a chat.

Feel free to email me to rami at this site.

This is my blog on software development, free software, business ideas, rants and ramblings. It is about scatterism: unfocused, opinionated.

Short story long

I was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1983.

I’ve been working with computers since 1987 or 88, I’m not so sure because at that time I was only five or six. I can vaguely remember my first DOS command, I think it was C:>games\prince\prince.exe.

I liked being a kid. When you’re a kid your brains are like an incredible sucking machine, like a starving hoover or a giant sponge. I would read just about anything I could get my hands on, psychology, literature, theater, music, math, theory, biology, history, you name it.

I loved to experiment. I had so many operating system installed on my computers that I lost count. I’d boot whatever disks I could get my hands on, DOS, Windows Regular, Windows NT, OS/2, MacOS, Linux, BeOS and even tried Irix. My favorite was OS/2, it was very stable and it could run Windows applications faster than Windows itself (or so it seemed back then).

I consider the time I installed RedHat Linux 6.0 a turning point. Gnome was so hideous it needed a partially-insane person to work it, command line was scary, and there was no cute login greeting. But I fell for it. Not because it was different, free, or stable, but because Netscape Communicator launched much faster than Internet Explorer on my machine. I couldn’t believe it.

Early 1997 I discovered Perl, an ugly, messy, cryptic language that misplaces if and while statements and has it’s own idea of simplicity. My first script was, guess what, a guestbook. The good ol’ days of Web 1.0.

I fell in love with Perl, and one thing lead to another, but it didn’t mean anything to me, I swear… errr, wrong audience.

But seriously, my problem is that I can’t settle down for high level abstractions. You’d try to teach me how to drive and I’ll end up reading about hybrid engine internals. And that’s what happened, I started learning Perl and I heard about CGI (the module), and reading about CGI (the standard) lead me to learn HTTP, and that to Apache, to socket programming, TCP/IP, kernel modules, x86 assembly. Go figure!

Fast forward to 2006. I’m a geek, a developer, an audiophile, a musician, a writer, a wanna-be millionaire and big smiler. I’m passionate, opinionated, often stubborn, seldom correct, a little focused… ooh look at the kitty… a little not, in short, a pain in the ass.

Clueless Tidbits

  • Perl is not a programming language, Perl is whole philosophy. perl is not an interpreter, it’s a swiss-army knife.
  • I’m a new-found minimalist. I have three folders on my desktop: Work, Personal data, music. My email inbox always counts zero. I use a wiki to document everything, articles, thoughts, ideas, todo lists, and all sorts of wacky stuff.
  • I believe .txt will rule the world, given enough time. Ironically, I use perl to grep mine.
  • I listen to Dream Theater when I’m coding, Pink Floyd when I’m reading. Usher when I’m dirty dancing.
  • I love music.
  • I love progressive rock. I love Jordan Rudess.
  • I love jazz, and I can’t favor a single band or person.
  • This list is never over.

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